Men don't need help in Haiti; just women

One of the commonly noticed and remarked on features of natural disasters is the tendency of humans to band together in times of crisis. It's by no means a universal phenomenon, but to an astonishing degree, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and the like bring out our communitarian spirit. In the face of natural disaster, people work together, often heroically, to help each other.

So it comes as no surprise that, following Tuesday's massive, magnitude-7.0 earthquake in Haiti, Haitians themselves, international aid organizations and the governments of many countries are rushing to the aid of the injured. Supplies of food, water, medicine and housing are all lacking. In addition to those already dead, who may number in the tens of thousands, the spectre of starvation and epidemics of bacterial infections looms large. Here's one article (Houston Chronicle, 1/14/10).

From all around the globe, relief is on its way. Before the earthquake struck, Cuba had some 300 physicians in and around Port-au-Prince. Brazil's army is already on hand to keep order and facilitate aid. China has airlifted supplies, as have countless other countries. The United States is sending both military personnel and civilians as well as supplies of food, water, medicine and temporary shelters.

In short, all are pulling together to ameliorate the disaster that's already occurred and to try to contain a widening crisis.

Except...

According to Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon.com's Broadsheet blog here, certain organizations are taking a "women and children first" approach to saving the injured and ill, and protecting the living from further harm (Salon.com, 1/13/10). And to Clark-Flory, that's just as it should be.

Now, before going too much further, let's be clear that children are the ones who need the most attention in times of crisis. They are, after all, less able to care for themselves than are adults. So it's clearly appropriate to direct scarce resources at children. And when children are the focus of aid, typically their mothers will be too. Particularly infants and other very young children are usually raised by their mothers or other female relatives. So to give shelter to a child is to give shelter to its mother; to nourish a child, especially a nursing one, requires nourishing its mother; the easiest way to save a child's life, even an uninjured one, may be to save its mother's life.

All that is simple enough, but it makes up little of what Clark-Flory is arguing for. From start to finish, her argument is this: women are special people and they need special help in this crisis. It's a classic case of "World Ends Tomorrow; Women Most Affected."

Therefore, according to Clark-Flory, "women in general will be in need of 'hygiene supplies..." Men and boys apparently will not need those things. And "women often require special care and resources post disaster." Men and boys don't need those things either. Is that because men and boys are supermen who don't need help? Or is it because they're less deserving of it than are women and girls?

Clark-Flory has the answer. She informs her readers that,

Women "are central actors in family and community life," says Enarson, and are more likely to know "who in the neighborhood most needs help -- where the single mothers, women with disabilities, widows and the poorest of the poor live." Diana Duarte, a spokesperson for MADRE, an international women’s rights organization that has joined the relief effort, put it this way: "Women are often more integrated and more aware of the vulnerabilities of their communities."

Read that again. It's not only that the women quoted don't seem to understand that men and boys can be injured and need help. It's not only that when one of them enumerates the people who may need aid, she only manages to come up with "single mothers, women with disabilities, widows and the poorest of the poor." (Maybe there are some males in that last category.) But the whole concept gets perilously close to saying that women, at least post-disaster, are actually more worthwhile than are men. According to Clark-Flory and the women she quotes, as the "central actors in family and community life," women are just better placed to know what's going on and to direct resources. If any of them think men deserve help, they avoid saying so.

Now of course no one stoops to anything so base as citing evidence for their claims. And presumably they hope we won't remember that, in almost every disaster, it is overwhelmingly men who fight the fires, clear the wreckage, pile the sandbags. We saw that in the hours and days after the collapse of the World Trade Towers in 2001. Clark-Flory and her sisters rely on our short memories.

The same people who stand ever-ready to complain that men have too much importance in public life, now tell us that we have none at all. They need to get their stories straight.

Frankly, much of what Clark-Flory and the "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" choir say is hortatory. It's the way they'd like things to be, not the way things are. UNICEF clearly has a mission to protect children and as I said above, that means protecting their mothers too. But I know of no other organization or country that will, in this crisis, ignore men or boys in need in favor of women and girls.

Clark-Flory clearly wishes it were otherwise, but I doubt that the human beings streaming into Haiti, motivated by the desire to help, share her misandry or her cold heart.

Thanks to Frank for the heads-up.

http://www.glennsacks.com/blog/

 

It's a case of "women have been opressed since the dawn of civilization" so men can now take a back seat. I have recently noticed that there is more and more of a double standard among people regarding gender. Now I know that men have had a upper hand in most facets of life before, but hypocrisy of advocating gender equality up too a certain point is asinine.

 

The women and children are the future of any tribe, people or nation.

"Women and children first" is practical advice in emergency situations. And it has been for millenia.

During natural disasters, the old tested priorities are the wisest.

 

Women need help because they don't have penis's


They're already jellous, don't embarrass them

 

The population of Haiti is almost 10 million, of which more than half are women. Their is no danger of there not being enough women to 'repopulate' the nation. Also, the author of the original article doesn't even bother to argue this point; her thoughts seem to dwell on the misandrist attitude of 'women are more important'.

What I find even more interesting is her inclusion of disabled women as being more deserving - to my mind a quadriplegic man is just as helpless in a crisis situation as a quadriplegic woman. The idea that a woman who can't walk is somehow more valuable than a man with the same disability is, quite frankly, absurd.

If one is in a situation where they must choose one life over another to save, the basic criteria is not sex, it is based on which has the greater chance of survival after rescue efforts are attempted.

 

I should think it's obvious that children need to be protected, and this means caring for those caring for the children, wether they be a mother, father, uncle, grandmother, adoptive parent or guardian, transvestite, it shouldn't matter.

Beyond that, aid should be given to those in the most dire situation, working up the chain until all have been cared for.

This should be common sense. Anyone who says otherwise makes me sick.

 

It's a throw-back to older times when women were more valuable to maintain civilization, especially since so many died in childbirth. If a man died, it wasn't as big a deal.